Everything Starts Where it Ends
by SelDeLaTerre
Summary: Kira Izuru is dead- but not gone. Ichimaru Gin keeps his memory alive by listening to a set of voice recordings that Izuru made before his death. What message could Izuru want to convey to his Taicho, to the lover who abandoned him?
1. The Voice of Izuru

…**And now a message from seldelaterre:**

I like Gin and Izuru. Because...they remind me of the comedy and tragedy masks people use to symbolize the theatre. Both of their faces are frozen in expressions they can't help but hide behind. It's unsettling.  
Please read and review.

Disclaimer:  
1) I don't own Bleach. If I did, Orihime would crawl in a hole and stay there.  
2) Rated M for Language and Suggestion. Very mild graphic ishe. **If you're looking for lemon, go buy some Lysol.**

"_If you are the cloud, then I am the snow  
If you are the rain, then I will not grow  
All of the asperity you have sewn"_

"Everything Starts Where It Ends" – Lovedrug

**Everything Starts Where It Ends**

**Chapter One- "The Voice of Izuru"**

A silver haired Shinigami paced fitfully; he traced furrows in the cold stone flooring with the constancy of his tramping feet. Ichimaru Gin walked heavily for one so agile and superiorly surreptitious, but that was a fault that only surfaced in times of extreme agitation. He'd been waiting patiently for the return of his envoy but there was no news. His patience waned.

The chamber was lit with a single lamp that hung from an iron rung bolted near his desk but Gin would have functioned with or without its harsh white light. He didn't need to see anything tonight, he only wanted to hear.

Izuru was dead. That was all he knew so far. His loyal soul had been rent apart by someone- one of Aizen's abominations- and reborn again in the human world, never to exist as Izuru Kira again. Dead. Vanished. Bled white. Murdered.

But not gone.

After what seemed like hours had passed, a knock at the door shook the ex-taicho from his inconsistent reveries. Gin sprinted across the room to wrench to heavy stone portal open and snarl at whomever had disturbed him, but he didn't have a chance to say anything before being shoved back through the open doorway.

"Gomen-nasai, Ichimaru-san, but your instructions were to minimize the time we were seen together."

A pair of perpetually weeping green eyes was lowered in deference as Gin's intruder bent at the waist in an obsequious bow. Annoyed by the Fourth Espada's overblown humility, the captain grabbed a tine at the top of Ulquiorra's mask and violently yanked him back into a standing position.

"Damn it, we don' have tha time for that! Did ya get them? Jus tha ones I asked ya for, mind ya."

"Hai, Ichimaru-dono." The espada solemnly pressed a thick square package into Gin's expectant hands. "I experienced no confrontation and was seen by no one."

Gin turned the heavy package over in his hands- the shape was right, but were there really that many of them?

"No confrontations and no sightings! Ya want a cookie?"

It was painfully clear that Gin wanted Ulquiorra gone. The green-eyed Espada excused himself.

As soon as the sound of Ulquiorra's steps faded down the corridor, Gin slammed the door shut and bolted it to further safeguard himself from the possibility of intrusion. He blew the lantern out and opened his watery blue eyes to allow his sight to adjust to the swimming blackness they were met with. The layout of his chamber was simple, almost Spartan in its sparseness, so Gin didn't have a problem with groping his way to the futon in the corner. Once seated, Gin scratched at the thin rice paper that wrapped the package Ulquiorra had secured for him from Izuru's abandoned quarters.

The instructions had been to sneak into Soul Society, locate Izuru's rooms, find this package, and to burn everything else to the ground. No witnesses, no screwups- kill anyone who might have seen you. If Ulquiorra was telling the truth, then the only thing the third division would have to report in the morning was that the late vice-captain's quarters had been set aflame. There would be no property to inventory and nobody would know what had gone missing the night of the fire.

Gin's cracked, yellowing fingernails caught themselves on a piece of adhesive that held the flimsy wrapping together. The paper fell apart in his hands and revealed the content of the highly valued package to Gin's blindly fumbling fingertips.

His fingers traveled smoothly in a circle, sensing deliberate grooves in the surface of what felt like a wide disk. A vinyl record, no- a stack of vinyl records! At least twenty five of them! There was a lot to listen to.

The first vinyl began with a crackle of static and a voice that sounded disingenuously familiar.

"_Are you comfortable, Kira-san?"_

"_Quite. Thank you. May we begin?"_

Gin's breath hitched in his chest. Right there! Like a fossil trapped in amber for millennia at a time, Izuru's voice would forever be preserved in these vinyls. Dead, but not gone.

"_Whenever you're ready."_

**December 13, 18:36. Session One. **

_My parents used to make a joke out of it, but looking back I think they were laughing out of worry. I mean, I was healthy and everything but I was, I don't know how to put it. They had a name for it; they said I had a- an 'anxious soul.' That was a cute way of saying that I was scared of my own shadow. I couldn't sleep because I'd always think I heard these creatures outside my window. Something would- used to scratch at the glass and tap on it. I'd- I used to hold a lamp out to scare them away but they were only trees._

_I think my parents were going to do something about it but they procrastinated, and then they died. The nightmares stopped a few months after they died. Ironic, I know. I've always taken that as evidence that I was a little bit, um. Sick. _

There was another voice on the recording, but the speaker's voice was muffled. Muffled, but disturbingly familiar.

Izuru's Voice broke out in a burst of short-lived laughter. The Voice on the recording couldn't give Izuru's laugh justice. His feathery, rapidfire giggling had attracted Gin to the blond shinigami immensely. Not because the laugh was particularly appealing or sexy, but because Gin had immediately attributed it to somebody who was quite potentially a nutcase. Metaphorical birds of a feather do, after all, flock together.

_Yeah, I guess you could call it that too. Either way I thought that was twisted. Um, I was already in the Academy by then, I always had people around me. I was never alone, so I was happy. I had Renji and Momo and all of the other trainees right there with me, watching me and caring for me. That's the last time I can remember feeling that complete._

_It's weird because I've been told over and over that I'm an introverted person, and introverted people are supposed to need time alone to restore themselves. But I feel like I can't live without the other people in my life. I count on them, I need them to feel whole._

The muffled voice sounded again on the recording, but this time Gin could make out what the other speaker was saying.

_These people who complete you, or make you "whole," what do you think would happen if one of them were to leave you_?

There was silence for a moment and Gin found himself grinding his admirable teeth in anticipation. He wasn't sure what he wanted Izuru to say, but he wanted him to say it- now.

_I would lose a part of myself. I'd be an amputee._

Shortly after those words, the recording slowed to a halt.

**End of Session One.**

Gin reached over and turned off the antique phonograph he'd jacked from the human world. It was definitely Izuru. The run-on sentences, the snide remarks (a habit Gin liked to think Izuru picked up from him), the pointed accuracy…it was the Izuru that Gin had known (biblically) and abandoned (mercilessly).

Izuru's voice brought back a wave of memories for Gin. Some of them were benevolent, most of them were dreadful, but all of them were hilarious in retrospective to the tasteless taicho. There had been an inordinate amount of social backlash after Ichimaru Taicho selected Izuru Kira to become his immediate subordinate. His fellow captains initially disregarded his decision on the grounds that Izuru wasn't as fit a choice as some of the other members of his division; some lesser officers accused him of abject favoritism and of harboring a hidden agenda. They were all idiots, and they were all wrong.

Why Izuru then?

Easy. He was damaged goods. Gin didn't need to open his eyes to detect how deliciously and deleteriously fucked up Izuru Kira was. The pretty blond boy was a strong and able fighter- he was capable of performing at a vice captain level, but so were several other officer's in the third division. Gin chose Izuru because he was interesting; he had the darkest outlook, the deepest secrets and the sharpest life. That spark of mystery behind Kira's cerulean eyes intrigued Gin to no end- he wanted to tear him apart and discover all there was to know about this fallen noble orphan. Izuru started out as an experiment, a dissection of sorts. If, after the dissection was through, Gin's charming subject was mutilated and left for dead in the tray- what did he care?

So his reasoning had been. So his reasoning had held up……for the first month or two.

Gin hadn't meant to fuck him. Honest. It just happened. It just happened when Izuru fell asleep at his desk and woke up with Gin's skeletal fingers working their way up his hakama. It just happened and within minutes the little blond slut was on his back, begging Gin not to hurt him. Pleading for him to let him go, _don't touch me like that, please Taicho you're hurting me. God. No. Stop. Please. Don't. No. Stop. Please. Stop. Don't._

_Don't stop._

The whole of Soul Society thought that Gin abused his vice-captain. The bruising was too violent and difficult to conceal. No living soul could possibly be so clumsy as to garner such an impressive array of black-and-purple markings. It became "common knowledge" that Ichimaru Gin beat Izuru Kira, but nobody dared to intervene. Izuru would never allow them.

Izuru liked it too much.

Of course nobody would believe him if he tried to out himself and his masochistic affair with his Taicho, so Izuru kept his mouth shut. Gin lived on in infamy as the fox-faced lunatic who beat his subordinates for pleasure or otherwise.

Until now. Gin reached out with a lazy finger and traced the stack of records next to his futon. He knew that Kira-kun wouldn't die without finding some way to tell his story. Izuru was a crack that needed to be filled and Gin had willingly obliged. Kira's very soul was hot-wired to require abuse.

Or so Gin had deduced. These records, the Voice of Izuru would confirm every notion Gin had ever made about Izuru Kira. His experiment would be complete.

_Izuru was a masochist. Izuru had a dependent personality. Izuru needed Gin. Izuru was a crack that needed to be filled. Izuru was fucked up. Izuru was damaged goods._

Gin's crescent-moon smile widened and froze as the ex-Taicho fell victim to the stony sleep that comes to the enlightened few who are convinced that they deserve the relief of such perfect rest. On the turntable, not an arm's length away from where Gin slept, the record reset itself and began to play into the unfeeling darkness of Gin's room.

_"Are you comfortable, Kira-san?"_

_"Quite. Thank you. May we begin?"_

"_If you are the voice inside of my head  
That's fine with me  
I'll turn down the bed  
You cannot control me from the other side  
No, you will not control me from the other side"_


	2. Bones

**Disclaimer:**

**I don't even own a bottle of bleach, much less Bleach Bleach.**

**I am my own Beta. Forgive me, for I know not what I do wrong.**

AN: I think that the main reason I always write male/male stories is because I don't understand women very well. Is that deep or just self-depreciating? Thanks for the reviews! They motivate me. And that's a big deal because I'm lazy.

_If you wanna come in  
You'll have to stretch my skin  
If you wanna survive with those beautiful eyes  
You'll give in_

_-"Bleed Together"- Lovedrug_

Gin picked erratically at the natto salad that one of the lesser arrancar had served him as a sorry excuse for a midday meal. Hardly a dozen of the sticky, pungent beans had passed between the shinigami's thin lips before he laid his chopsticks down and pushed the mostly full bowl away with a disgusted grunt. Gin couldn't bring himself to eat, not after last night. Hearing Izuru's voice for the first time in several years had stripped Gin of his already meager appetite.

The fact that he was lunching with an audience didn't do much to stimulate Gin's culinary enthusiasm either. He'd always had a problem with eating in front of other people; in fact it was that particular idiosyncratic social compulsion that had whittled the taicho's six-foot frame into a solid pillar of bone and sinew. Adipose buildup, or any of the usual fatty deposits that clung steadfastly to even the most ardent of anorexics, seemed to avoid Gin's body as surely as the ten Espada did. He blamed his unnatural slimness on a fast metabolism, or a pocket of energy-burning reiatsu he didn't know about.

"Gin." Sosuke's deep voice echoed massively in the large ballroom-sized space he'd refurbished to act as a dining room in the cavernous compound the resurgent Shinigami called home. Las Noches.

"Wha? Oh, gomen Aizen-sama. I wasn' payin attention." Gin was caught off guard when Sosuke addressed him as their meals were traditionally taken in silence (yet another reason Gin rarely ate communally. The chamber was so quiet he could hear himself chewing and the noise positively disgusted him).

"Kira Izuru's body was counted among the enemy dead after our last battle."

A day ago, Gin would have been visibly shocked- he might even have frowned at having such…interesting news sprung on him at mealtime. But this was no news to the deceptively sanguine shinigami; he merely cocked an eyebrow and answered Sosuke blandly.

"Don' trouble me with news like that, if ya please. I'm eatin and ya know how I hate sad stori-"

Aizen interrupted him, already having heard enough of Gin's dicey verbiage to confirm his suspicion.

"Kira-san's quarters were demolished in a fire last night, Gin. Soul Society is in an uproar. Now, I will only ask you this once: did you have anything whatsoever to do with the fire? You know better than to attempt to lie to me."

_Well, shit._ So much for keeping things secret. Gin would have wagered Shinso towards the probability that Ulquiorra had dashed into Aizen's lap and squealed like a big horned piggy the minute after he dropped off Izuru's records.

"Oh, 'bout that." Gin adjusted the collar of his robes and turned to smile apologetically at his superior. "Yeah, I had to burn his stuff. Mostly for security reasons. He was trackin' me, see."

Aizen's cold brown eyes scanned over Gin's perspiring frame. After an interminable silence, he sniffed and concluded the conversation.

"Eat your natto, Gin."

"Hai, Aizen-sama"

Gin looked up from his repugnant bean salad (the smell of natto repulsed him) and locked eyes with a solitary figure that had positioned itself across the vast hall at some point during his conversation with Aizen. Ulquiorra was standing so tranquilly that Gin had to open his eyes slightly to reassure himself that the espada wasn't simply a flaw in the architecture. As much as Gin wanted to strangle Ulquiorra for being Aizen's lapdog, he knew that he couldn't blame the espada for his unwavering loyalty. He cocked his head in an attempt to silently communicate with the stoic arrancar:

_You hate me, so you betrayed me. I understand that. Did you tell him about the package?_

Ulquiorra appeared to understand Gin's wordless message. He responded with an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

_No.__ Todos necesitan sus secretos aquí_. _Lo entiendo. __Estás salva conmigo_. ((see note))

With one last fleeting glance over at Aizen-sama, Ulquiorra turned on his heel and disappeared down the nearest corridor.

--)eswie(--

**December 20, 18:14. Session Two**

"_What did you mean when you called yourself an 'amputee'?"_

_Exactly as I said. If I lost an arm or a leg I'd be impaired. I wouldn't be able t-to function as I had before. I'd have to learn a new way of life and retrain myself to live without the… without that missing part of me. That's what would happen if somebody I cared about lef- got lost._

A long pause.

"_Is that what you think Ichimaru Taicho did? He got lost?"_

_No, my Taicho never get lost. He just…absconded. _

"_And what did that mean for you, to have him abandon you?"_

The timbre of Izuru's voice changed dramatically as his rarely piqued temper flared up at the other speaker. Gin imagined for a moment that he could feel the frantic pulse of Kira's usually stable reiatsu flowing out of the phonograph, but of course that was impossible. Izuru's voice, seasoned or not by his oft-hidden anger, was nothing but the shadow of a footprint left behind by the dead fukutaicho.

_I didn't say he abandoned me! I said he absconded. That's- it's different! He didn't desert me! There's one thing you need to get straight right now- my taicho did NOT abandon me! He didn't- he couldn't! _

A crash; a brief scuffle. The noise cut out abruptly as someone had evidently had the sense to reach over and turn the recording off before it got damaged in whatever fracas had occurred.

**End of Session Two.**

Even in flashback, Izuru's unbreakable loyalty struck a chord of appreciation in Gin's noticeably deficient heart. But even that faithfulness had been deemed suspect by many seated officials. Brainwashing, they called it. Stockholm Syndrome. Gin had chalked it up to the possibility that Kira was the tiniest bit in love with him.

**December 27, 19:00, Session Three **

_He saved my life, I mean we would have been slaughtered by those Huge Hollows if Aizen-san and…you-know-who never showed up. I watched him fight with such control and…and I became enraptured. I knew that he smiled all the time but when he looked down and reassured the three of us that everything would be all right, I don't know. I was young and I imagined that he was smiling just at me. He said I was brave. I almost fainted. I thought he was fearless._

_I was a silly freshman and he was a vice-captain. The distance, um…the power gap rather, it was immense. He was so cool with the premature grey and everything. I know a lot of people wouldn't have agreed with me on it but I thought he was very handsome in his uniform. And tall! I knew that I wanted to either be just like him or serve under him forever, whichever came first._

Izuru was never aware of how close he came to losing his only opportunity to be with Gin. When Aizen took Kira into his division along with Hinamori and Abarai, it had been his intention to groom them all into Sosuke loyalists. They were the most promising graduates of the shinigami academy, but none of them proved themselves to have that outstanding trait- the fear of death- housed within their souls. They would be useful as pawns and nothing more.

When the time came to release the gifted trio into the greater ranks of the Gotei 13, Kuchiki Byakuyu had asked Aizen specifically for Izuru Kira to be transferred into his newly acquired sixth division. He wanted Kira-san because he felt that he had much in common with the powerful young man. They were both reserved, quietly elegant men with noble blood and a keen sense of social propriety. His intentions were perhaps fatherly. Either way, Gin had fought to secure Izuru's place in the third division after learning that he had competition for the blond's subordinateship. Especially if that competition was that high-riding, flowery pompadour Byakuya. Izuru had been marked as Gin's for months, there was no way that he was going to allow Kuckiki to steal him away then.

Gin's closeness with Aizen ensured that he came out of that battle in the place of the victor. Pretty Kira was awarded to the disorganized, sarcastic, lazy, slit-eyed taicho and Byakuya eventually wound up with…Abarai Renji.

…And people still wondered why Gin seemed to smirk a little wider whenever he passed Byakuya in the street. He'd never allowed that baroque nobleman to forget that he couldn't always get what he wanted. Gin always made a point to strike up pointless conversations with Byakuya to test his resolve and to rub their shared standing in the sixth division captain's exquisite face.

_Everyone avoided him and advised me to do the same. Renji didn't like him and Momo changed the subject whenever I brought him up. It was the smile. They- I heard people say that he was so fake, so counterfeit with his emotions._

_I just thought he looked lonely. Like he smiled because he had nothing else to do with his lips._

Kira spent the first few weeks reorganizing the third division's headquarters and trying desperately to get Gin's drastically overdue paperwork in before the whole division was cited. Gin would lounge lazily on a futon in his office and watch as the skinny-legged blond would scurry first to one end of the room, then the other, then to the desk, then out the door…it was like watching a busy ant trying to bring an entire loaf of bread home one crumb at a time. Fruitless. Pathetic. Hilarious. Gin would occasionally call for Izuru to make tea for him, but mostly he would nap in the shade of his quarters and watch Izuru mill about from underneath his heavily hooded eyelids. Izuru would occasionally cast a glance behind him, as if wondering if Gin was ever going to acknowledge his work or (dare he hope?) help out with the massive deficit of labor Gin had dug himself into.

That's where the sex came in. Gin walked into his office on one otherwise uneventful evening to find Kira snoring lightly over a half-inked report that was supposed to have gone to the General yesterday. His young body was worn out and sprawled limply across the surface of the cherrywood desk. A thin line of drool had descended from Izuru's bottom lip to waterstain the parchment beneath his head. The forelock of soft blond hair that Izuru had just started to grow out over his face had been swept back counterproductively, leaving the smooth expanse of his golden forehead exposed. Despite the peace brought on by the sudden slumber, Gin detected a silent note of sadness in Izuru's reaitsu. He sensed Izuru's hurt that his Taicho was ostensibly ignoring him. Izuru had desired a closer relationship with Gin; he needed to feel that he was needed and not just convenient.

Gin laid his head down on the desk next to Kira and wiped away the trail of spittle with the tip of a long, bony finger. After wiping his hand on his hakama, Gin woke Izuru up by reaching into his shirt and lightly pinching the first fold of skin he could get between his fingernails. Izuru woke up to see Gin's face planted not an inch away from his own and…screamed.

Gin had found Izuru's yelp to be the funniest sound he'd ever heard his fukutaicho make. He expressed his amusement by crushing their lips together, chucking darkly as he physically pried Izuru's jaws open and forced his dexterous tongue through the younger man's forcibly parted lips. Kira's shrieks melded into whimpers that somehow gave way to gasps and guarded moans as Gin proceeded to lavish the virginal blond with all the attention Izuru ever could have desired…from the waist-down.

"I see ya sighin' at me, Izuru" Gin had whispered in Kira's ear after they had been spent, sated and showered. They were curled up with postcoital finality together in Izuru's bed, despite the blaringly obvious fact that the bed was better suited for more singular sleeping pursuits. The satisfied taicho possessively draped a skeletal arm over Izuru's chest as they stared at a sickle moon through the skylight in his room.

"Don' go thinkin' that your taicho doesn' appreciate ya." Gin had rolled over onto his side and pressed an obligatory kiss at the base of Izuru's neck.

"Thank you, Izuru." He knew how badly Izuru needed to be accepted. Would fixing Izuru's damage be as easy as a few languid fucks and some well-placed compliments? Gin sincerely hoped not, but it was a grand start. You can learn a lot about a person by seeing how quickly they adapt to being molested.

Izuru had answered Gin with a kiss administered with such bruising force that Gin literally felt himself swallow his next words. This time it was Kira who coaxed Gin's lips open and Kira who clutched Gin's shoulders with able hands that trembled with pent-up emotion. He kissed Gin and kissed Gin until they fell asleep.

_I was…astounded by Gin's body. There- I said his name, didn't I? Gin. Ichimaru Gin. Gin Gin Gin. Hurrah. _

_His body. I was astonished by it. The first thing I noticed was his skin. He was so flawlessly pale except for a few, uh, these two little birthmarks on his thigh and a tiny fifth division tattoo he'd had done between his shoulder blades. I think he's had it removed since. _

Izuru was wrong. The tiny number was still there- Gin kept it out of a show of deference for Aizen, he supposed. Even after he earned his own division in his own right, Gin remained marked as Sosuke's subsidiary.

_But when I say pale, think the moon. Think linen, think mushrooms. He was always perfect like that- like even tan lines were afraid of him. He towered over me by ten, maybe twelve centimeters but it wasn't all in one place, you know? How some people are all legs or some people just have a long torso…not Gin. (There it goes again! Gin!) He was measured out in some divine ratio and I-I stared. For a long time I just watched him remove his clothing. Did you ever think about his hair? Yeah, it's silver but I mean the rest of it. It's not grey. He had this thin, kind of downy covering on his arms and legs. Dark, but you can hardly notice it. No knuckle hair, no chest hair. _

_It wasn't even thick down_ there. _Yes, it was there but it wasn't obnoxiously there. Which is nice, I guess. I mean you can't rule people out just because they've got a lot of hair but Gin was really blessed in that sense. I saw his body in the light and didn't want to take my own clothes off. I have scars and sunburn and I'm not totally blond; I was very inexperienced. He had to undress me the first few times, but that's okay. I think he liked it._

"_You speak as if…Gin was flawless in your eyes."_

Izuru's hollow, hurried laughter erupted again from the depths of Gin's phonograph.

_Kami, no! Gin wasn't flawless. He shed his hair like a summer panda. It was impossible to get it all off my pillows and my clothing. Silver threads everywhere, clogging up my drains and winding up in my food. _

_His elbows were razor sharp, his ribs stuck out more than his stomach, and when he slept on top of me all I remember feeling is his bones on my bones. He was emaciated, but he still managed to have his beauty within that. _

_You're looking at me strangely, is it because I've said Gin had beauty? I never understood how the others never saw it. Gin was stunning and I'll always give him credit for th-_

Kira corrected himself. _I shouldn't talk in this past tense. "Gin was this and Gin was that." It's not like he's dead or anything. He's not dead…just gone. _

Gin choked on the tea he'd been enjoying up until that moment. Those precise words coming out of Izuru's mouth were unsettling. And converse.

_I hope he likes the food better wherever he is now, because he never ate much here. Or, at least, he never ate in front of me. Do you think he had a……an issue with that? I've never even thought about it. I should have cooked for him or something. _

**End of Session Three**

"Honestly, Izuru," Gin raised his cup in a lighthearted toast to his late lover,

"I'm not sure whether or not I'm s'posed to be flattered by that, but I appreciate tha detail all tha same."

He drank down the dregs of his tea before removing the record from its revolving podium. It was very interesting to hear these things so many years after they'd initially occurred. The idea that that he left such a lasting impression on Izuru from the first day they'd met reawakened the substantial ego Gin had abandoned in favor of serving Aizen so many years ago. And to hear Izuru speak of his body so candidly was…informative, to say the least.

Gin recalled being impressed with the solidly aureate figure Izuru had cut when released from the constrictions of his shinigami uniform. Where Gin had bones, Izuru had freshly trained muscle. Gin's blue eyes were washed-out and insipid; Izuru's were cheerless but vivid. Izuru was athletic, moisturized, and limber. Gin had patches of dry skin behind his knees and wasn't anywhere near as flexible as the oft-mentioned "snake" comparison would have led one to assume.

All the tea that was left in the pot was ice-cold. Gin rang for someone to come and make him some more (Izuru had spoiled Gin into relying on other people to make his tea and the convention had persisted through the years…). When the service arrancar appeared at his door, Gin politely asked for another pot of hot water and some white tea leaves.

"Hai, Ichimaru-sama. It will take me five minutes."

In a moment of nostalgic impulse, Gin called out for the arrancar to wait a moment.

"Actually, if ya could grab a snack for me while yer in the kitchens, that'd be great. Don' ask me what I want. Surprise me."

Eight minutes later, the arrancar returned with a pot of fresh tea and a bowl of…natto bean salad.  
Gin ate the whole bowl.

_"You got it wrong, this isn't right  
There's something beautiful that hasn't yet died  
This stupid song  
My popularity  
I see my misery and it looks fine."_

--)eswie(--

**Omake:**

Ulquiorra: "I'm acting kinda sketchy. Does this mean that I get a subplot?"  
Seldelaterre: "Eh….maybe."  
Ulquiorra: "Oh come on, I'm your favorite Espada! Gimme a subplot."  
Seldelaterre: "I'll think about it."  
Ulquiorra: "What do I have to do to convince you to give me a subplot?"  
Seldelaterre: "…make me a sandwich."  
Ulquiorra: "This is degrading…"

((note -)) - _"No. Everybody needs their secrets here. I understand that. You are safe with me."_

_  
_Ulquiorra: "...Hey man I've got your sandwich but- HEY! Since when do I speak Spanish?"  
Seldelaterre: "Thanksforthesandwichulquigottagobye!"  
Ulquiorra: "Lo coño."


End file.
